


Where We Are (I’m Willing to Break Myself)

by Brosedshield



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Brother Feels, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brothers, Gen, Heaven, Hell, PTSD, Purgatory, Sam Winchester's Wall, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 11:35:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8400133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: After the Great Wall of Sam falls, Sam and Dean end up in a place that isn't really Heaven, and isn't really Hell (they would know...they've been there). This is their story of continuing.(Closing story to "Hell Shall Not Wash Us Away". Probably won't make a lick of sense without reading that one first)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last fic in the Hell Shall Not Wash Us Away series. I still want to write Sam's deathscene, but have no ideas about continuing this series beyond this place. Feels good to have this WIP off my drive and into the wild where is can hopefully be enjoyed. This work has been beta'd by the excellent LaviniaLavender. All remaining errors and illogicalnesses were lovingly added by me afterwards.
> 
> Thank you all and always for reading. 
> 
> (Also, this is something of a birthday present to myself. I can't imagine a better way to celebrate almost three decades of telling stories than by giving you a story :) )

Sam would never have wanted Dean to end up in Hell. He fought, every hour and day to keep him from that fate, and he would have fought after as well to keep him out. But now, standing in the shattered worldscape that was a place beyond both Heaven and Hell, he was grateful.

Not grateful for Dean’s pain, or the struggles that he passed through, but because without that somewhat-shared experience of post-death agony and strain, he isn’t sure that his brother would have survived when Sam’s Wall (that completely internal, but oh-so-solid structure that had separated his memories of being a soul, in a Cage with an enraged fallen angel) had fallen. Other things had been swept away. Bobby’s cabin in their shared afterlife, the friends that had gone before them. Even the structure of Heaven itself had trembled beneath the corrupting, twisting influence that was Sam’s shattered mind, soul, and psyche.

That is how the afterlife functions, after all. It is formed by the hearts and minds of those who arrive in it. Heaven is wired to bring only the happiest memories to the forefront, to give people the best of everything they have ever experienced. At times that can seem hollow (what is humankind without struggle?) or not nearly enough. There are men and women who have longed for the good times all their lives. Yet when they reach the Pearly Gates, they don’t have that joy to bring to the table, for Heaven to be fashioned.

Still, everyone has the best days, and Heaven gives them that.

The world works different in the Hot Place. There, the aesthetic was fashioned by Lucifer millennia ago to break down souls, and that shattered nature pervades the fabric of the place.

Sam was the devil’s own toy for a year in the real world, and longer than the human mind can conceive in that twisted internal landscape that was the Cage. He still sees Luci in the fog that is his and Dean’s current existence, now that they have been cut loose from heaven. Mostly in the shape Lucifer wore when they were alive, cracking and diseased, a broken thing that could still be strong enough to pin Sam down and—

On very very bad days, Sam can see Lucifer’s other shape in the mists, can feel it caressing, pressing against his mind. But other times, when he sees monsters in the beyond and feels the broken edges of a heart and soul he knows, for once, that those shattered pieces aren't his.

He and Dean share a brokenness.

Fragmented minds can be healed, but they also tend to infect those minds near them with that fragmentation. If Dean had been whole when the Wall fell, he may have shattered when Sam did. But, because he cracked long before, what is one more fissure?

Sam was broken into so many bits that he’s not always sure who he ever was when alive. He knows that some days he is Sam, and some days he’s some sociopathic thing that feels nothing but the need to run or hunt or fuck, and some days he is a broken creature, cringing at the shadows of the devil in the darkness.

No version of Sam is willing to leave Dean here in the dark, with monsters that wear faces Sam never learned to fear. 

~*~

Dean’s brother may have spent millennia in a Cage with a fallen angel, but Dean is far from whole. When he was alive, Dean repressed or drank away a thousand little things, but you can’t do that when you’re dead. When Sam’s Wall fell, Dean didn’t so much fall with him as he  _ remembered _ .

When he sees Alastair’s face (and hand, and knife) in the fog, or Sam looks at him with Souless Sam’s dead, practical eyes, or he feels a pain in his shoulder and he turns expecting there to be a hook through the bone...those are bad days. He gets by, every time, because if he falls apart, he’ll take Sam with him.

He knows in his bone’s that he’s Sammy’s anchor in this reality that ain’t got an up or sideways, but it just  _ is _ . How you see yourself is what shapes everything you are, and for a couple guys like the Winchesters, with shitty self-esteem paired with a hero complex, that’s not a good place to be. They’d be dead by sun up (if the sun ever rose, or they could die again), except that a person in this place is shaped by the _Other_ too.

Dean knows that Sammy is the best brother, the best person, that the world has ever fucking known. Nothing that was done to him in the Cage, in the Pit, under the hands of fucking Lucifer himself can change the essential truth that Sam Winchester is the best, the bravest, the kindest, the smartest...fuck, Dean could go on. Dean's not the good one or the smart one or the bravest one, but he’s going to watch out for his little brother until the world takes that choice out of his hands, and then he’s going to fight his way back to his side. That’s just the way it’s going to be.

He has no fucking idea what Sam sees when he looks at him. But, whatever it is, it keeps Dean here, and mostly sane. Or as sane as he ever was, alive, just without the liquor to dull things out.

There’s a sense of movement where they are. Amid the rivers of blood that can transform to birds or crabs or diamonds at the flicker of a thought, the heat, the cold, and the utter absence that can come upon them without warning, there’s a vague feeling that they are going  _ down.  _ Some days, Dean wonders if they’ll hit Hell eventually. Might be nice. They’ve fought their fucking way out of Hell a couple times, they could probably do it again. Then he stomps on the thought. Bad and strange as this place is, it is better than other places they’ve been. And ain’t that a depressing thought?

~*~

They don’t talk a lot. Names and words have power, and sometimes the very act of defining the world changes it, refines it into something they didn’t want it to be. They certainly don’t name things, not unless they are sure about the thing, or desperate. It’s not superstition if the world itself plays by rules of will and belief. 

Once, early on (by some measure, though time is uncertain in a world where the sun never really shines) Dean saw a strange spiky plant growing up in the crevices of their existence. 

“Check out the Twoeys!” Dean said.

Sam, flinching away from a too-familiar shadow in the dark, turned to blink at him. “What?” he asked, voice just a little too harsh.

“Twoey, like Audrey II,” Dean said. “C’mon, you never never saw Little Shop of Horrors?”

Sam blinked at the plants. Now that Dean had spoken the words, they did look a bit more like an [alien venus fly trap](http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/littleshop/images/5/50/Little-shop-of-horrors-original.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111106173944). “Yeah, I suppose so,” he said. “We should probably keep moving.”

He had had the feeling, then, that something was chasing them.

That night, wrapped closed to his brother for the safety of that other trusted mind beside him, he he heard them whispering.

_ Feeeeed me, Sammmmmmy. Give us blooooood. Feeeed meeeeee. _

He jerked upright, heart beating too hard in his chest, making the rest of the world pulse red with his terror. “We have to go,” he said. He almost reached for his knives and his guns, his duffle and the keys to the Impala, before remembering that they had nothing like them here in this worldscape.

Dean was awake as well, pulling himself up more slowly. “Right,” he said. “Sorry, Sammy. I didn’t...won’t do that again.”

Alive, Dean had rarely apologized for anything. But here, where Sam could see his sorrow, beating in support and kindness against his mind, it was easier in some ways. More necessary in others.

They learned that names had power, and that they could influence the world. Months (or possibly millennia) later, they were walking as always (upward, or possibly sideways now, it was still hard to tell) when they heard it. A howl through the dark, something that cut through their minds. Both Winchesters looked toward the noise. Sam, alert and tense, Dean as pale a broken ceramic plate, all sharp edges.

A shape began to appear in the dark. Four legs and writhing darkness with eyes and intent.

“Oh fuck,” Dean said, voice breathy as thought hiding a scream, “Fuck, it’s a—”

“Dean!” Sam snapped. If Dean called that thing a hellhound (like they were thinking), then that was what they would get.

Dean stopped himself and swallowed. “It’s a puppy,” he said. “L-Look, Sam, you always wanted a dog.”

They were both ready to run, but the shadow stopped yards from them. It still didn’t have exact lines, but there was something less aggressive in its stance, and Sam could have sworn that he saw a tongue lolling cheerfully from the monst—creature’s mouth. 

“Puppy, yeah,” he said. “Who’s a good boy?”

The...puppy let out a call that sounded like a bell and a bay and something that could break bones if loosed with intent. It sounded friendly, as much as such a call could.

“Yeah,” Dean said, relaxing just a bit and keeping the hound in his peripheral vision as he turned. “Though, Sam, who says it’s a boy?”

The creature followed them for days, but the threat never approached that same level as that first moment when they could have made a horrible choice through the simple act of a name.

Sam even managed to pet her once or twice as the pieces of his own shattered mind began to fit together. The black, tentacle-like hair was thick and soft under his hands. Dean never got that close but, then again, even before he’d been dragged to Hell by a hound, he had never been all that fond of dogs.

~*~

Whoever said “You can’t take it with you” had clearly never died.

Dean still is and has everything he ever was. That’s good, somedays, when it’s just him and Sam (sometimes with that damn dog, which he’s getting better and better at thinking of as a dog and nothing more) on the road, doing the best they can with what they have. That’s worse on days when he sees Alastair’s eyes staring out at him from the dark, and he wakes up with the need to drive a blade into a writhing body just to stop his own pain.

He has everything, still. He takes it all with him. But as he gets used to being here, in this place that is not really Heaven, and only vaguely Hell, he becomes more and more okay with what he carries. He’ll never be done with it, he’ll never truly leave behind the pain he got and gave, but he gets better at carrying it, better at accepting it, and better at sharing the burden.

He leans on Sam when he can, and Dean takes any of his brother’s burdens that are offered, and some days he can almost bear existing. After all, between themselves and the world, this is everything they are. 

They are stopped, making imaginary stew over an imaginary fire, and the sky in the distance is bloody red with shards of the Wall that have never quite gone away. They eat, quietly, with Puppy a huge bulk at Sam’s back, and the world drifting with them.

When Dean scrapes the bottom of the bowl with a bit of bread, he carefully sets it to the side. If they try to bring it with them it will disappear, but sometimes things follow them. He’s hopeful, someday, that they’ll find the Impala again: that she’ll just appear out of the darkness, and they’ll be home in every way that matters.

Sam looks out over the darkness and feeds Puppy the last of his meal, careless of the huge fangs flashing across his fingertips. Dean wonders sometimes if Sam even sees the same thing that Dean does when he looks at the dog. Dean kind of hopes not.

“Could we go?” Dean asked, standing. He’s not tired, and lately it seems like their world has been moving upward again. Maybe they are heading somewhere, though where exactly is hard to imagine. He doesn’t really want to try. He just wanto to keep moving, while the moving is good.

“Yeah.” Sam stood as well.

They began moving together through the world again, the dog a cheerful, terrifying shadow at their heels. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't decide which creepy quote to make the title of this fic. The original one was just sad, and not completely accurate to where the boys are at the end of the fic:
> 
> “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed  
> In one self place, for where we are is hell,  
> And where hell is must we ever be.”  
> \--Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
> 
> And then the second option was good, because Sam and Dean will always sacrifice anything they are for each other (Something Corporate is my soundtrack for angsty, lost Winchesters) but I liked the first one better :)
> 
> I'm willing to break myself  
> To shake this hell from everything I touch  
> I'm willing to bleed for days, more reds and greys  
> So you don't hurt so much  
> \-- “Break Myself”, Something Corporate
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! Comments/kudos are love, I also exist as knownasbelen on Tumblr.


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